Bees do so much more than make that sweet goop that goes so well with tea and crumpets. They also pollinate apples, berries, melons and about a hundred other crops that make our meals healthier more delicious, and more colorful.
We owe a lot to our honey bees. In fact, they pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of produce in the country each year — or about a quarter of the food we consume.
But, as you might know, honey bee populations around the world are dipping at devastating rates. And if these worrying trends continue, this is what your grocery store would look like: Half-empty.
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That’s why Whole Foods Market is trying to get us — and their youngest consumers — buzzed about bees in their Share the Buzz awareness campaign.
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The grocery chain also announced a new initiative, the Honey Bee Grant Program, to educate youngsters about the importance of the honey bee.
In a recent announcement, the Whole Kids Foundation said they will award approximately 50 hive grants to school gardens across the country in order to teach kids how to raise bees and tend hives. The added bonus? As kids learn how to take care of their fuzzy friends, they also learn lessons on pollination, agriculture, ecology, and nutrition.
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“You can’t learn about growing fruits and vegetables without learning about bees,” said Jeff Miller, a beekeeper and educator at the non-profit DC Honeybees in Washington, D.C., in the announcement. “Bees are as important to the process as sun and water.”
As the foundation notes, any parent who is worried about exposing their kids to stinging insects should note that bees are naturally docile and, that with proper supervision, kids and bees can peacefully coexist.
Saving the bees and educating children at the same time — sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
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Tag: whole foods
Baking Their Way to a Better Life in America
Nancy Mendez rises at 2:30 a.m. each day to travel from her home in Queens, N.Y., to her job as a shift manager at Hot Bread Kitchen, a very special bakery in Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem. Starting at 4 a.m., the mother of two from Puebla, Mexico, turns out a dizzying selection of ethnic breads — from a hearty German rye known as grindstone to a Persian sweet bread called nan-e qandi. Mendez’s favorite part of her job, however, is overseeing the making of tortillas, which Hot Bread creates from whole corn kernels softened with lime. “I’m proud to make tortillas the traditional way,” says Mendez, 29, whose husband works in the produce department at a grocery store. “I like my job.”
Mendez is one of a dozen immigrant women to date who have completed the nonprofit bakery’s rigorous, yearlong training program and landed a full-time management job. Founded in 2007 by Jessamyn Rodriguez, a former human rights and immigration policy worker, Hot Bread has two core missions: producing delicious ethnic bread and training immigrant women for management-track positions in professional bakeries. Incubated in Rodriguez’s home kitchen in Brooklyn, N.Y., the bakery now has a 10,000-square-foot commercial kitchen in Spanish Harlem and sells its breads across the Northeast, everywhere from upscale grocers to outdoor farmers’ markets.
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Unique breads are at the heart of Hot Bread’s success. On a recent visit, this reporter especially enjoyed m’smen, a flaky Moroccan flatbread made from wheat flour, semolina and butter. The recipe for the traditional breakfast bread was developed by Hot Bread’s most lauded trainee, named Bouchra, who later went on to become a baker at the Michelin three-star restaurant Daniel in Manhattan. Another trainee from Puebla, Mexico, introduced the recipe for Hot Bread’s staple tortillas, made from whole corn instead of the less flavorful, dried corn flour used in most store-bought tortillas.
Of the 39 trainees that Hot Bread has recruited since 2008, 17 have completed the intensive, yearlong program and 12 have landed full-time baking jobs either as shift managers at Hot Bread’s headquarters or at other bakeries. Trainees — who are recruited mainly from ESL programs at local colleges and support groups for immigrant women — work 25 hours a week and receive $8.25 per hour. In addition to learning to make more than a dozen types of breads, they polish their English, are taught how to use email and to create a resume. Hot Bread also connects trainees with public resources for child care, housing assistance, food aid and domestic violence support if needed.
“The goal is to create more equality in the job market,” says Rodriguez, by helping women learn the skills they need to earn at least $14 an hour. Of the 6,000 bakers in the New York City area, only 500 of them are minority women, she says.
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While many trainees are already adept at baking when they start the program, adjusting to a professional work environment isn’t always easy. Early morning and late-night shifts can be tough on women with young children at home. And trainees who come from cultures in which men are dominant sometimes struggle with learning to be more assertive when working among them. “Depending on their culture, they may hold back,” says the bakery’s training manager, Beatriz Mieses-Hernandez, who coaches the women on communication and conflict resolution. What’s more, they must adjust to the fast pace of a commercial kitchen that goes through 10,000 pounds of flour each week, according to Robin Burger, the business development manager.
Hot Bread once relied almost entirely on outside funding, but 70 percent of the bakery’s $3 million annual budget now comes from earned revenue. The company sells to retailers like the salad chain Chop’t (which buys the bakery’s sourdough croutons), Whole Foods (challah and tortillas), and gourmet grocer Dean & DeLuca (granola, lavash and tortillas). It also rents out kitchen space and provides business guidance to entrepreneurs who are hatching catering businesses. (Fees start at $17 an hour, but subsidies are available.)
The thriving business coupled with success stories like Mendez’s earned Hot Bread’s founder a Global Citizen Award from the Clinton Global Initiative last September. Rodriguez also has ambitious plans for the future. She plans to bring on 30 new trainees in 2014, incubate 45 culinary startups, and expand operations to five cities in the Northeast. “The goal is to be completely funded by earned revenue,” says Rodriguez. Judging by how far she’s come since she started baking out of her own kitchen just seven years ago, we think she’s got a pretty good shot.
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Why Walgreens, Whole Foods Are Letting In More Light
This is one of those everything-old-is-new-again stories. Major retailers like Whole Foods and Walgreens are
discovering they can save money by retrofitting their daylight fixtures. What’s that mean, exactly? Replacing windows and skylights with new ones that let more light into a building. More sunlight means less need for electric lighting. And lower costs. Seems obvious, but windows weren’t always so efficient at preventing heat loss as they are today. When you multiply all the windows in all the big commerical buildings across the county, the savings add up to millions of dollars. Making existing buildings more comfortable and cost effective to run is an extremely green building strategy.